Reading Acts, a book from the Bible, and if you know anything about this book you will know what it is about but for those that do not, Acts is a book from the Bible and it follows Paul on his journey as he moves from city to city to preach the word of God and how he gets rejected, jailed at times and eventually they realized that what this guy is saying is actually fact and one by one they give their lives to the Lord. Paul goes to all these places and of course, it gets rough but never does he have a “that is it I am out” mentality. He has such Conviction in the word of God that nothing the people do in the cities makes him think it is time to pull the plug on this God thing. Have any of us ever had such conviction that, when it is the roughest you are still like “I am not going anywhere, I am going to stay right here?”.
Every day we have moments of conviction. When it is good we have conviction, but when you are unsure, when you remember that you were actually hurt by this thing or person, that conviction goes away. Do you still have that conviction when it is ugly when they reject you or went to jail, do you still have that conviction in that mission?
We have become people of moments, we are consumed in the moment but then when the moment is gone so are we and that is sad because like their name moments only last a moment but there are some things that should last longer. There are some things you should fight for and work for because they are worth it.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him.
Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b] (Acts 17:16-28)
Paul has conviction that the word of God would change the hearts of the people in Athens, he knew that the God they were serving would and could never do anything for them. We need to get a place where we know that nothing is going to work for us but this particular thing and it will be hard, there will be moments when we think that you are wasting our time but you need to remember just what and who you are doing it for, it is not for a moment because you feel strongly about this and have faith in it.
Almost what Jesus did when he walked on this earth, He has conviction in the Word of God and knew that it was save people because He was just like everyone else. Have conviction and understand that when you stick in through it all, it will be worth it because you were worth it to God.
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Until Next Time
